HEATHER WATSON defied the odds to knock out Julia Goerges in round one of the Indian Wells Masters and on Friday the British No.1 is again the underdog.

Watson is 7-5 against Camila Giorgi, who is 10 places higher in the world rankings at No.33 and priced up at 4-6 by William Hill. Their only previous meeting, won by Giorgi, went the distance and Paddy Power’s 5-4 for over 2.5 sets looks decent value.

There’s also plenty of men’s first-round matches from Indian Wells on Friday and home favourite Sam Querrey is 4-5 at Betfred against Sergiy Stakhovsky (23-20, Sportingbet) while the likes of Marcos Baghdatis, Steve Johson and Jerry Jancowiz are all eyeing progress.

At the Cricket World Cup defending champs India take on Zimbabwe and there’s the likes of snooker, boxing, golf and rugby before NBA action takes us into the weekend.

Good luck with your bets and as always let’s hear your sporting tips and thoughts.

Sri Lanka’s openers are capable of batting the whole innings against a weak Scotland attack. Even if they do take an early wicket they’ve got record breaker sangakkara to come in.

South Africa haven’t looked convincing against a decent attack, being skittled for 177 v India and 202 v Pakistan. However they’ve absolutely bullied the weaker attacks and have been very entertaining. They hit 14 sixes against Zimbabwe, 11 against West windies, and 12 against Ireland. UAE on the other hand haven’t been too entertaining, they only scored 4 against a poor Zimbabwe attack and just 1 against a slow Ireland and India.

NZ have been absolutely flying off the mark at every opportunity and with the aggression of McCullum, Guptil, Williamson etc they could tear apart this Bangladesh attack, which was made to look a lot better than it is by England (They conceded 320 against Scotland). On the other hand, Bangladesh have generally started slowly with a lot of their runs coming from their middle order. They were reduced to 8-2 and 99-4 against England before being rescued by the middle order and if Anderson can do that to them early on then imagine what southee and Boult can do!

Cheers oriaz and oh yeah Jordan and I huggy I blindly followed your ss which was nice to wake up to thanks. Had a really big profit day and saw your 4-1 record so thought why not. I’ll keep an eye out for it again!

Huggy, your picks are good mate. I keep an eye on other websites and most were backing Spurs with the way they’ve been playing lately. Bad luck last night, but keep it up, it’ll turn around. And your expertise is definitly a + for the combined SS.

jordan credit yesterday he pulled out that ss , i`m just gutted to lose a bet like that , thats how bb goes talk about fine margins , 9 up with 3 to play you`d like to think spurs win from there , but credit where its due you hit a 57 point game i suppose irving deserves the win.

This is a big price. It’s 5/4 with most other bookies and that is much more what I was expecting. I would possibly still take that, as Fish was superb on his first match in 18 months yesterday and he and Dimitrov are both strong behind serve and that can count for a lot in doubles. Verdaso and Ferrer have only ever played together a couple of times I think and not for years, so there’s no edge there. I’m not sure which way it will go, but nearly 2/1 is too big too ignore.

I had written a paragraph on each detailing what needed to happen for these to win and why i thought there was value in backing it to, but my computer shut down and I can’t be bothered to repeat myself! Good luck.

I don’t really have a strong opinion on that match to be honest JJ. PCB has a chance and the odds are decent. I’d expect Young to win given the surface and the location, but I’m certainly not going to back him.

This is probably going to be the killer for my acca now I’m coming to realise it’s going against your tennis brain 😉

But didn’t you see Carreno-Busta is the first set against Rafa in Rio? I know it was on clay, and he’s a far better clay courter than Young, but he really diid take Rafa to the wire in that 7-6 first set which Rafa pinched on the tie-breaker..

I did see that set JJ, and I agree that PCB was excellent. I was really impressed and even had a little in play bet on him which obviously didn’t win. But that was a Rafa well below his best and on a clay court. On an American hard court it’s a different story. He’s unlikely to be able to dictate against Young on this surface, which is where he hurt Rafa in that first set. But you never know, if Young is a little sluggish after his Davis cup exploits it could be there for PCB if he plays a good match. We’ve seen a fair few people come over to Indian Wells from European Davis cup duty and struggle. Troicki, Sousa and Ward spring to mind. I’ll be interested to see how it plays out. Good luck.

Afghanistan were robbed by the rain, as I’m not sure they’ve ever seen any before. They would have definitely won if it weren’t for the rain. 10 and 8 point bets won by new Zealand so still a very good night’s work!

I haven’t put up reasoning with my tips for today and tomorrow but if anyone wants any then just ask away and I’ll be happy to provide it. I’ve certainly gone for some speculative picks and a few may end up looking very stupid (I’m a little nervous about Vesnina!) but hopefully I’ll get lucky on enough of them to make it a good couple of days.

Bonus bet: Putintseva to beat Ivanovic @ 7/1

This relies on everything coming together for the Khazak pocket rocket, or of course on Ana having one of those days. She will probably get smashed, but I just can’t resist! I’m also kind of tempted by Hradecka to beat Bouchard @ 4/1 but her serving this week hasn’t been good enough so i’ll let that one slide.

JJ- my reasoning is a little flimsy on that one – it’s probably the least confident of all my picks and appropriately the biggest priced. But Makarova has looked pretty iffy for patches of recent matches i’ve seen her play in. Vesnina is pretty unreliable but when she puts it all together she’s a really good player. The h2h suggests this is a bad matchup for Vesnina and that’s probably true. But Makarova can throw in really poor tennis every now and then and I’m pretty much just gambling on that happening here. Vesnina has a good win to her name already this week so hopefully she can build on that. She can be very erratic but she can also play very steady tennis when she puts her mind to it as well as having big winners at her disposal. It’s a long shot, but this is women’s tennis after all!

Giorgi if she doesn’t go missing for large chunks of the match. She could easily do that. She could also easily breeze it. It’s a no bet for me. If someone wins the first set 6-0/6-1/6-2 I’ll bet on the other player to do th same in the second set at a big price.. Could be one of those matches

OriaZ I’ve not had a look at any upcoming games yet mate, been so caught up with Cheltenham this week. Will spend a good bit of time looking through them all tonight though and let you know what I think/find. Might be quite late though so keep an eye out on here of possible

Wigan -14 vs hull I wrote prior to the Huddersfield game that wigan bounce back well from a shambles which we did following a disaster against widnes. Last week we suffered a big disaster one of worst performances in recent years. Tonight wane will have the boys back on it, if we lose tonight it will be 4 defeats on bounce and that’s like man u losing 4 on bounce we can’t let it happen. So tonight the warriors season gets back on track

Wigan -14 to win

Also a couple of anytime scorers at big prices Bateman 21/10 at b365, Ryan Atkins 11/8 for Warrington and Hanbury at widnes 1/1

Brian no but unfortunately my SS is prob not worth going on now as I posted before at Under 217.5 in the Warriors/Nuggets game, but team news is saying all the Warriors stars are sitting out and the total is now at 208.5.

I had no idea they were sitting out mate so thel uck was on my side more than anything. Think 206 in the Kings/Sixers game is a bit high and Under would be my NB but I’m all in on my SS so I’ve left it mate. Be cautious if you go for that.

Bad start from the upsets. Vesnina had chances but wasn’t good enough when it mattered. Can uytvank went a set up but crumbled, fish/dimitrov flopped as well. Really need siniakova to win now to help me out. Then hope the girls do the business tomorrow. I’m doing okay in play but that’s not much help to anyone!

No mate not tonight. Came home from work and saw the total and jumped on it, and by pure luck the Warriors stars weren’t featuring so no need to put any eggs in other baskets. Sorry mate. I could put one up but I wouldn’t be on it and wouldn’t be fair if it lost.

Shotty this was the game we should have got the season going, 12-0 up at half time playing well but we went into our shell second half once hull scored, wigan in some great positions had interception we nearly took back and blew a glorious try that was brought back for forward pass just need to have more composure but stress of losing 3 games on bounce hurt us, Bateman was held down 2 metered from line with great last ditch tackle so few things went against us tonight

Just seen it Jordan thought we was asleep during the agency we done nothing (don’t count hill) that’s a good get for us now throw in an outside linebacker to replace greenway and a guard and it’s happy days